Sen. Mary Kay Papen: More legislating, less politicking is needed

This legislative session, I sponsored several bills to improve health care — particularly mental health care — for the state's most underserved and vulnerable populations. Unfortunately, these bills didn't make it all the way through the legislative process.

For those who don't live at the Roundhouse, let me explain. Bills are introduced into one house or the other. Each house determines which committees will consider each bill. In order to make it to either the House or Senate floor, a bill has to first make it through several committees, with each committee free to make amendments to, or even substitute, a bill along the way. Sometimes bills move through a committee seamlessly; other bills are the subject of extended discussion that can literally last for hours.

Legislative committee chairs decide what bills go on their committee agendas, and in what order. The speaker of the House and the Senate majority floor leader decide the order in which bills are considered in their respective chambers. In 2015, legislators had 60 days to move their bills through legislative committees and both houses for passage.

Bills I sponsored or co-sponsored that did not make it to final passage included proposals to:

— give Medicaid providers (of all stripes, not just behavioral health providers) due process and independent review if the Human Services Department decides to stop paying them based on a "credible allegation of fraud"; and

— create a process to place seriously mentally ill people who cycle in and out of hospitals and jails into assisted outpatient treatment (AOT).

Despite being passed out of its last House committee on March 19, the AOT bill was not added to the House agenda until mid-morning on March 21, the last day of the legislative session. Unfortunately, the House vote took place late, since most of the morning was spent debating the capital outlay bill. Since minor amendments had been added to the AOT bill in house committees, it still needed to return to the Senate for concurrence with those changes. With only minutes left before the session ended at noon, there was no concurrence vote because of a filibuster in the Senate.

While there is blame to go around, politics took precedence over helping those New Mexicans most in need. With our mental health system falling apart, with too frequent reports of confrontations between the mentally ill and law enforcement and with one-third of the state's population counting on providers being willing to take Medicaid patients, this should have been the year legislators of both parties acted to improve the lives of marginalized New Mexicans. I am very disappointed that this much-needed legislation did not pass.

Mary Kay Papen, D-Las Cruces, represents District 38 in the New Mexico Senate, where she is president pro tempore.